26 <-- Ernest lives in New York at the Hotel Meurice on West Fifty-eighth Street. His wife died a year ago, and he has no children; but his godson, a son of Ercole Marchisio, proprietor of the Marguery, has a passion for the res- taurant business, and Ernest hopes to take him to work at the Colony soon. Gene lives with his family in an apart- ment in Jackson Heights and pays a visit of inspection every two years to his farming estate in Italy; his two children, a boy and a girl, are not in- terested in restaurants especially. Ex- cept when they're abroad, Ernest and Gene work at the Colony every day from eleven in the morning until around midnight, with a little time off on Sundays, in the summer. Ernest, a quiet, rather refl ective man, goes to visit his friend Marchisio at Pelham Manor, where he paints fences, builds chicken coops, and sits in the sun. Gene, whose blood is hotter, likes to get up early and go to the country to shoot things; he will lose a night's sleep, any time in the season, to bring down a partridge or a quail. Last year a janitor, waxing the floor of the big party-room, upstairs over the restaurant, managed to set it on fire. This was the room where Jimmy Walk- er, Charlie Chaplin, and other celebri- :\ \ ( put back only one or two. This is philosophy of a kind, but it lacks the tolerance and affec- tion with which Ernest and Gene have come to regard human nature as it is exemplified by their patrons. Not long ago, Miss Marlene Dietrich came in to the Colony for lunch. Gene, knowing that people like to look at movie stars, and that movie stars like to be looked at, put her at a small table in the cen- tre of the room. Pres- ently Ernest noticed that she was fi dgeting ; beautiful women have to lean slightly back- ward in order to let their gaze rest swim- mingly upon the pub- lic, and Miss Dietrich had nothing to lean against. Ernest, ap- proaching with a swan- like motion, moved her to a table against the wall, with flowers, ferns, and stained glass behind her. "What she wanted," he said, later, "was a background." -MARGARET CASE HARRIMAN \ ties had given parties, and where Chap- lin originated his snake-charmer dance, in which, lying on his stomach, he plays the rôles of both charmer and snake. It was here, too, that the Prince of Wales gave three parties the last time he was in America. Charred now, and use- less, the room haunts Ernest and Gene. They would like to do something perfect with it, but perfection in the restaurant business is not as simple to achieve as it once was. Prices, and profits, are lower, and good waiters are hard to find. A perfect waiter, accord- ing to Ernest and Gene, should have been a busboy at fourteen, and should have learned at fifteen how to carry twenty stemmed glasses safely with- out a tray. (He does it by putting twelve of them, upside down, into his left hand, three stems between each two fingers, and picking up the other eight with the right hand alone.) There are some things that waiters kn ow instinc- tively. Few have to be told, for instance, to bring change to a customer with the coins on the bottom of the tray and the paper money on top; the reason for this practice is that if the customer picks up the paper money first, he is likely to leave all, or nearly all, of the coins on the tray as a tip, but if he has to pick up the coins first, he is apt to (This is the second of two articles on the Colony Restaurant.) . R.HY ME What laid, I said, My being waste? 'Twas your sweet flesh, ,,-rith its sweet taste, \\Thich, like a rose, Fed with a breath, And at its full Belied all death. It's at springs we drink; It's bread we eat; And no fine body, Head to feet, Should force all bread And drink together, Nor be both sun And hidden weather. Ah no, it should not; Let it be. But once heart's feast You were to me -LOUISE BOGAN